Top 100 Picture Books Poll Results

And here at last they all are! Pressed and cleaned and ready for your perusal. From one to one hundred and everything in between. And remember that if you want this list in a fancy handout PDF that looks a lot nicer and can be given to patrons, parents, teachers, etc. just sign up for it here. Enjoy!

None of this could have been possible without the help of Eric Carpenter. He single-handedly created the algorithm that allowed us to tally the votes easily. Then he and Sondra Eklund did double duty to get the final votes tallied and ready in the time to announce. Thanks too to the survey monkeys Sam Bloom, Katie DeKoster, Joy Wright, Kate Conklin, and Dick Holmes who all did the initial tallying.

Elizabeth Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.

Comments

Time to do a diversity analysis, especially as you specifically asked people to think about and include some POC this time around. Lovely to have The Snowy Day at #5, of course! Still, of the ten books I voted for, eight made the list–and the two that didn’t are the two with main characters of color (Angel Child, Dragon Child and Elizabeti’s Doll). Which is largely because they’re the most obscure, but there may be a correlation between their obscurity and their featuring people of color.

Once I’ve posted the 100 Novels I’ll definitely do a diversity analysis. I was certainly pleased to see at least a slight increase in author/illustrators of color (Freight Train didn’t make the list last time) but there is huge room for improvement here, particularly when we talk about recent books. The Lion and Mouse is an exception, of course . . . but more in my incipient post.

While I theoretically agree about the POC situation, I think this is a great list and better than last time. I wish more POC were include, but it is so important that the picture books people truly love and children look for with delight , books that they will someday read to their children and at the same time be transported back to their own childhhod, be voted in for their own merit and not who wrote them.

Thank you, Betsy and everyone else who worked on these lists (picture books and novels). Just having the names would have been nice but your detailed posts on each one were amazing. I learned a lot of new facts about various authors, new resources, and new books to read and recommend.

Awesome job. Thank you very much for all your hard work and effort. This was a labor of love and it showed.

As Miriam wrote, it’s possible that there is a correlation between books being somewhat obscure and their diversity…..it’s possible that we’ve all read and loved books that feature non-white characters, but DIFFERENT books, so that they’ll never make it in a list culled from a poll.

Maybe a list, suggested by readers of your blog, of great books that feature diversity rather than a poll? Could be a combination list of picture and chapter books (or even stretch to include teens)?

I do find as I look at the recent list that I prefer the first poll you did that was ONLY picturebooks. Call me a picky purist, but when you mix in board books and beginning readers, you leave out some great picturebooks. I look forward to seeeing what almost made the list as well as a diversity analysis. Again, great job!

I hear where you’re coming from, David. I’m sure that accounts for some of the almost-made-its. This time around I was looking more at the age of the intended audience than the format. That and the fact that a Top 100 Board Books and Top 100 Easy Reades poll, while interesting, would probably only nab about 50 clear votes before descending into books that got a vote apiece.

That would certainly be true if you considered Beatrix Potter, Herve Tullet, Melanie Watt, Shaun Tan, Tim Wynne-Jones, Robert Munsch, Mini Grey, and Mem Fox American. Which, for the record, they are not. Apart from that, this was a poll conducted in America. I suspect that may have had something to do with the results.

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About A Fuse #8 Production

Features everything from librarian previews of upcoming children's books to news, reviews, and videos. If it has something to do with children's literature, it will rate a mention here.

Betsy Bird is the Youth Materials Specialist of New York Public Library. She's reviewed for The New York Times and Kirkus, writes articles for Horn Book and SLJ, and wrote the picture book Giant Dance Party. You can contact her at Fusenumber8@gmail.com or follow her on . . .